When it started out, it was an awful lot of fun. Of course, the paying customers got shafted every now and then, and after a while we began to take their complaints seriously.
ALAN PERLISYou’ve solved the wrong problem. Work hard to improve.
More Alan Perlis Quotes
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What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail and learning to be self-critical?
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To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program.
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There is no such thing as a free variable.
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Are more sure when you can write, even more when you can teach, but certain when you can program.
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Often it is the means that justify the ends: goals advance technique and technique survives even when goal structures crumble.
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A picture is worth 10K words – but only those to describe the picture.
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Optimization hinders evolution.
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Any noun can be verbed.
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When a professor insists computer science is X but not Y, have compassion for his graduate students.
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Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
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A language that doesn’t affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
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In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word “frustration”.
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Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately described with pictures.
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Work hard to improve. Success is also easy to handle.
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Everything should be built top-down, except the first time.
ALAN PERLIS